[CS] THURSDAY Science and Religion Lecture "The Awful Crater and the Eternal God: Volcanoes and Missionary Science in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i" by Tracy Neal Leavelle, Ph. D., March 28 at 5:30 in Franklin Patterson Hall Main Lecture Hall, Hampshire College

[Paula Harmon]

Title: /*The Awful Crater and the Eternal God: Volcanoes and Missionary 
Science in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i*/

Science and Religion Lecture March 28, 2013 at 5:30 in Franklin 
Patterson Hall Main Lecture Hall, Hampshire College
Tracy Neal Leavelle, Ph. D.
http://www.creighton.edu/ccas/history/faculty/facultyprofiles/leavelle/index.php

Abstract: In 1852, Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawai‘i erupted in 
dramatic fashion, sending fountains of lava hundreds of feet into the 
air and down the side of the mountain for miles.  The American 
missionary Titus Coan climbed Mauna Loa to study the event and found 
himself alone and afraid on the great volcano, aghast at “the awful 
crater.”  Here, Coan discovered the imprint of a mighty God of creation 
and destruction.  In a prominent American scientific journal, he 
reflected, “I seemed to be standing in the presence and before the 
burning throne of the eternal God.”  The volcanoes of Hawai‘i 
represented for Coan the dynamic contest between salvation and 
damnation, civilization and savagery.  As such, they became sites of 
both rigorous scientific study and deep religious contemplation.

Biographical: Dr. Tracy Neal Leavelle is Associate Professor and Chair 
of the Department of History at Creighton University and a former 
Woodrow Wilson Foundation Fellow at Smith College.  He has recently been 
appointed Director of Digital Humanities Initiatives at Creighton.  His 
first book is The Catholic Calumet: Colonial Conversions in French and 
Indian North America (Penn, 2012).

-- 
Paula Harmon, Administrative Assistant
School of Cognitive Science
Hampshire College
893 West Street Amherst, MA 01002
phone: 413.559.5502
fax: 413.559.5438
http://cs.hampshire.edu
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